UC San Diego
Department of Communication
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Morana AlacMorana Alac

Associate professor in communication and science studies

alac@ucsd.edu, Homepage

Education

Ph.D. in Semiotics, University of Bologna (2002)

Ph.D. in Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego (2006)

Research

Morana Alac conducts ethnographic research of scientific laboratories and other settings of technology production and use. She works with video to focus on the dynamics of embodied social interaction.

Alac's main project regards laboratories of cognitive science, neuroscience, and robotics. She is interested in how scientists learn about human thinking and behavior by employing new technologies -- social robots, motion-capture systems, face recognition, and functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Publications

  • Morana Alač, Javier Movellan, Fumihide Tanaka (2011) “When a Robot is Social: Enacting a Social Robot Through Spatial Arrangements and Multimodal Semiotic Engagement in Robotics Practice,” Social Studies of Science, 41(6), 126-159.
  • Morana Alač: Handling Digital Brains: A Laboratory Study of Multimodal Semiotic Interaction in the Age of Computers, MIT, 2011.
  • Morana Alač "Moving Android: On Social Robots and Body-in-Interaction", Social Studies of Science, 39:4, 2009, pp. 491-528.
  • Morana Alač: "Working with Brain Scans: Digital Images and Gestural Interaction in fMRI Laboratory", Social Studies of Science, 38, 2008, pp. 483-508.
  • Morana Alač: "From Trash to Treasure: Learning about the Brain Images through Multimodality", Semiotica, 156-1/4, 2005, pp. 177-202.
  • Morana Alač: "Widening the Wideware: An Analysis of Multimodal Interaction in Scientific Practice", Proceedings of the 27th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, B.G. Bara, L. Barsalou, and M. Bucciarelli (eds.), Erlbaum, 2005, 85-90.
  • Morana Alač: "Negotiating Pictures of Numbers", Journal of Social Epistemology, 18:2, 2004, pp. 199-214.
  • Morana Alač & Edwin Hutchins: "I See What You are Saying: Action as Cognition in fMRI Brain Mapping Practice", Journal of Cognition and Culture, 4:3, 2004, pp. 629-661.
  • Morana Alač & Patrizia Violi (eds.): In the Beginning: Origins of Semiosis, Brepols, 2004.
  • Morana Alač: "Squashing, Rotating, Seeing, and Going: On Visual Knowledge in fMRI Research", Proceedings of the 25th Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society, Richard Alterman and David Kirsh (eds.), 2003, 73-78.
  • Morana Alač & Seana Coulson: "If You YOYO are You on Your Own?",Apparatur, 4, 2002, 42-49.
  • Morana Alač & Seana Coulson: "The Man, the Key, or the Car: Who or What is Parked out Back?", in A. Hougaard and S. Nordahl (eds.) The Way We Think, vol. II, Odense Working Papers in Language and Communication, 23: August, 2002, and Cognitive Science Online,2004,21-34.
  • Morana Alač: "Cultura ed Evoluzione", In: Anna Borghi and Tina Iachini (eds.), Scienze della mente, Il Mulino, 2001, 285-304.
  • Morana Alač: "Donald Davidson and the Limits of Interpretation",Versus, 80/81, May- December, 1998, 3-15.